A Utah County woman was convinced her "faith-based" decision not to get her family vaccinated was the right one for her and her family. That fateful decision may cost her husband's life, who has been in an ICU since July 1.
Source: New York Times
As Mindy Greene spent another day in the COVID intensive care unit, listening to the whirring machines that now breathed for her 42-year-old husband, Russ, she opened her phone and tapped out a message.
“We did not get the vaccine,” she wrote on Facebook. “I read all kinds of things about the vaccine and it scared me. So I made the decision and prayed about it and got the impression that we would be ok.”
They were not.
Her husband, the father to their four children, was now hovering between life and death, tentacles of tubes spilling from his body. The patient in the room next to her husband’s had died hours earlier. That day, July 13, Greene decided to add her voice to an unlikely group of people speaking out in the polarized national debate over vaccination: the remorseful.
“If I had the information I have today we would have gotten vaccinated,” Greene wrote. Come what may, she hit “send.”
Now, she had all the information before that she has today, but chose instead to read some bullshit online, or watch Fox News, or do any other damn stupid thing, instead of doing what the real experts were pleading with her to do: "Wear a mask, practice social distancing, get vaccinated." The mantra of the last eighteen months.
But she has come forward with her cautionary tale in the hopes that others won't repeat her mistake. So some props for that. Some people just have to learn things the hard way, and for Mindy Greene this will be the worst mistake of her life. As she told KSL,
If she had to do it all over again, Mindy Greene said she would get her family vaccinated, and she hopes others will look to credible sources, like trusted doctors and healthcare workers.
She believes people will change their anti-vaccine minds when they have accurate information.
If her faith was shaken, that moment is over as, she said, she sees daily miracles in her husband's treatment.
"I still have those moments where I know he's gonna be OK," she said.
Her advice to those still vaccine-resistant isn't overbearing or judgmental.
"Educate yourself with facts and then make the decision. Include the Lord in that process and he will help guide you," she said. "But, you cannot make an educated decision on fear and lies."
As usual in these cases, the family's medical bills are astronomical, and the cynic in me suspects one reason why these people come forward after the fact is just to get financial help. A GoFundMe account has been set up to help cover the family's medical bills.
Mindy Greene from Provo, UT read articles on Facebook and prayed whether she should have her family vaccinated. God said no. Her husband is now fighting for his life in the ICU for over a month. She says she now realizes the “studies” she read were bogus and the “experts,”frauds. pic.twitter.com/GYKYlLvSg7
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) August 8, 2021
“I read all kinds of things about the vaccine and it scared me," Mindy Greene said.
She and her husband, the father to their four children, thought they'd be OK without it. Now he's on a ventilator, hospitalized with complications from Covid-19. https://t.co/fdZMSx1ylj pic.twitter.com/sni4lhXtfR— The New York Times (@nytimes) July 30, 2021
